Circle of Gerrit Berckheyde (Haarlem 1638-1698) A helmeted man in armour with inscriptions 'J de Geyn' (verso) red chalk, pen and brown ink framing lines, watermark seven-pointed foolscap 11¼ x 7½ in. (28.5 x 19 cm.) The interest of this drawing lies in its connection with at least five other studies after the same model: one offered in London, Sotheby\\\’s, 10 December 1986 (lot 155, as by Bega), one in London, Sotheby\\\’s, 9 July 2008 (lot 50, as attributed to Bega), and three at the Städel, Frankfurt (inv. 832-834), where they are traditionally (but certainly erroneously) given to an artist from The Hague, Johan le Ducq. As the man in the drawings in the auctions and one from the group in the Frankfurt (inv. 833) is seen in the same pose, only from slightly different viewpoints, they must be the work of three artists working alongside each other in a sort of academy in Haarlem in the circle of Gerrit Berckheyde and Cornelis Bega. The drawing sold in 2008 could be the work of Berckheyde himself, while the others are at least two different artists, but not by Bega, with whom Berckheyde is often confused. Even if the attribution of these drawings cannot for the moment be established with certainty, the group stand as precious and appealing testimony to a practice that was adopted by certain Dutch artists in the course of the 17th century (for a discussion, see P. Schatborn, Dutch Figure Drawings from the Seventeenth Century, exhib. cat., Amsterdam, Rijksmuseum and elsewhere, 1981-2, pp. 19-22, 105-9).